The Red Dragon Inn

[Michelle Montoya]

Hey everyone,

I want to talk about something that's a bit sensitive and where there may be some really strong feelings. It's about a setting that's core to our history: The Red Dragon Inn. I came back to RoH in January so let me set the stage. I know very little about the parting between RoH and DM and any of the fallout from that. This post is not to re-hash that separation but rather to discuss our community setting moving forward. I will try and keep this post brief.

The Red Dragon Inn is both iconic and an essential part of our history. I found it confusing, when I returned, that the arena/annex/outback settings were the same but that we conveniently ignored that the Red Dragon Inn was on top of the arena. It threw me for a bit of loop not seeing the RDI but I quickly adapted since the Inn itself was never a major role-playing space for me.

I've never been one to advocate for things purely based on nostalgia. However, having the RDI as a channel or as a setting description may offer a place of familiarity and make things more welcoming for people coming from a non-duelling setting if they're coming from DM or another Rhy'din play-by-post location not affiliated with DM/RoH. On the flip-side, we don't need to cater to them and I think those of the "old guard" (back from AoL days) who still come by here/find us can and have adapted to a new setting.

I'm not sold to any particular idea, and I don’t think we need the competition between two inns' (Golden Perch and RDI). We're making a new history and moving forward, which I support. Mallory has done a great job with The Golden Perch and I support the history and character she and others are building there. I think at the very least it would be nice to see the Red Dragon Inn in our settings page. Even if it isn't a live-play server, it's an important part of where we came from and I think we should acknowledge that.

To summarize I see a few options for our community.
1. We go with business as usual and ignore the RDI setting except for passing comments like our description for the arena in our settings page.
2. We create a discord channel for the Red Dragon Inn. We can either do this with the Golden Perch Inn setting staying active or replace it.
3. We acknowledge the Red Dragon Inn as part of our history by creating a description for it in our Settings page.

Perhaps there are other ways for us to include the RDI or maybe as a community we are past that and moving forward. I'd love to hear everyone's' thoughts about this.

-M

[Canaan]

I want to start out by saying thank you for making this post! I had every intention of doing so myself when I got back from my trip, so I was pleasantly surprised to see you’ve jump-started the conversation already. And much more eloquently, I might add.

“I know very little about the parting between RoH and DM and any of the fallout from that. This post is not to re-hash that separation but rather to discuss our community setting moving forward.”

I know you don’t mean to re-hash that stuff, but I don’t think we can have this conversation without doing so, at least a little bit. We kind of have to, because it’s my understanding that the whole reason we don’t already have an RDI channel was because we were trying not to step on Dragon’s Mark’s toes out of long standing courtesy.

To be frank, I don’t think we should be concerned about extending that courtesy anymore. We were all but told to get the fuck out and had the door slammed in our faces. Not only that, but management there appear to have fallen off the face of the earth again. It’s been a week shy of three months since they’ve made any kind of announcement or post to their users. By all appearances, they're not even doing anything with this 'toy' they're hoarding all to themselves. And speaking of said users, there are things happening on the boards which are being done purposely to keep us from being involved creatively, whereas, conversely, we have continued to be open and accepting and all around encouraging for folks to join in however they wish to play--on any website they choose.

“I've never been one to advocate for things purely based on nostalgia. However, having the RDI as a channel or as a setting description may offer a place of familiarity and make things more welcoming for people coming from a non-duelling setting if they're coming from DM or another Rhy'din play-by-post location not affiliated with DM/RoH.”

“The Red Dragon Inn is both iconic and an essential part of our history.”

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Months ago, I was fairly against creating a Red Dragon channel. I insisted we should be creating our own legacy. But I’ve had time to think about it now and… why? We already have a legacy. The RDI is that legacy. It doesn’t belong to Amaltea. It doesn’t belong to Panther. It belongs to the collective, all of us. The RDI exists all over the internet, and it’s basically synonymous with Rhydin. How many people show up here for Rhydin and end up leaving because there’s no Red Dragon Inn? Familiarity is what’s going to draw those searching players in and when they’re comfortable, they’ll start branching out into our other settings.

I agree that Mal’s player has done some amazing things creating fun spaces for us to play. The Golden Perch is so imaginative and I don’t think I’d want to see it disappear. I don’t see why they can’t both exist. While I agree that the channel list shouldn’t be a mile long, restricting the number of channels isn’t an effective strategy to funnel people into playing together. Who cares if it’s a little more spread out because we have ten rooms instead of eight? The point is just to get people to play.

“Perhaps there are other ways for us to include the RDI or maybe as a community we are past that and moving forward.”

The option for inclusion has always existed on our part. It still does.

Anywho. All that to say: I’d like to see--and would use--an RDI channel on Discord.

[Harris]

Familiarity is what’s going to draw those searching players in and when they’re comfortable, they’ll start branching out into our other settings.

This. It’s rhydin.org now. The Red Dragon Inn is a landmark of the RhyDin RP scene. It should exist here because it’s familiar and immediately recognizable, which will be all the more beneficial if/when Dragon’s Mark tanks and the players there are looking for somewhere to take their creations.

[JewellRavenlock]

[RDI] belongs to the collective, all of us. The RDI exists all over the internet, and it’s basically synonymous with Rhydin. How many people show up here for Rhydin and end up leaving because there’s no Red Dragon Inn? Familiarity is what’s going to draw those searching players in and when they’re comfortable, they’ll start branching out into our other settings.

The part in bold is the pivotal question for me along with: who is not even showing up/finding us because we don't have the Red Dragon Inn?

I started thinking about this more seriously a few weeks ago when I noticed that several former duelers from years ago are finding us because dueling still lives on here. It made me wonder if we could have the same pull for old AOL RPers (even those who didn't play in the RDI) by having the Red Dragon Inn here. Not for nostalgia purposes so much as a sign that says: "The RP you used to love on AOL is still happening here! Come play!"

So thank you for bringing this up! I would very much like to see a Red Dragon Inn channel on our server.

[KhaoticBliss]

I'm for adding the RDI back. I get why it was left off to begin with, but the people who ran/allegedly run DM have made --and continue to make-- it very clear that anybody affiliated with RhyOrg and Discord in general is persona non grata on the DM website. It doesn't really feel like there's any "courtesy" left to respect, personally.

And yes. To echo Canaan, Harris, and everyone else so far... we pretty much are the Rhy'Din legacy, and we are also its future. The Red Dragon Inn should come home.

[Mallory]

As an aside, whatever comes of this discussion, I am comfortable with changing or removing the Golden Perch if it comes to that. I like the bar and I think we've given it a lot of character considering the relatively short time it's been around, but I can see how it might be redundant if we end up with an RDI channel.

Something I've tried to do with the Perch is try to connect it to the dueling venues, via tunnels that connect the Perch's basement to the Arena/Annex stairwell, and via Mallory creating a portal to the Twilight Isle at the end of her shift on Tuesday nights to promote Rory's shift. But the RDI has more solid connections to the dueling venues. The Arena and Annex (as Michelle mentioned) are beneath the RDI; I believe the Outback is supposed to be out back of the Inn, and isn't the Twilight Isle portal situated between the Inn and the Outback?

I know not everyone played much in the RDI, but in a way it serves as a physical nexus for the dueling venues, helping to place them within the city and relating them to one another.

[PC]

The inclusion of RDI is RhyDin history and from a players point of view I'd very much like to see it brought to its community and used. At the same time I don't see why the Perch couldn't stay as well and act as a flow-over room / continue to be used by those who have enjoyed it. I'm sure there are some players who see high activity in a room as almost impossible to keep track of, it was that way on AOL and even on Flashchat, and it'd be nice to have a secondary inn-like setting for those times.

[Bailey Raptis]

I will preface my comments by saying that, as much love as I have/had for Dragon's Mark and Red Dragon Inn in the past -- the characters, play relationships, and OOC friendships that have been created as a result of being on that site from 2007 until all the kerfuffle last year (though when I came back to RP last summer, I pretty much jumped right to here) -- I wasn't a big fan of bringing RDI back here at first. I held out hope that there might someday be a reconciliation, and I thought that adding the Red Dragon Inn to our chat channel list would needlessly antagonize what remained of the community on RDI/DM that hadn't yet made the jump.

I've had some time to think about this, and we've all had some time to read the tea leaves, and I am now in agreement with what seems to be the general sentiment: there's no absolute right for one site to have the Red Dragon Inn, people want it to exist as a channel here both for the logic of its connection to dueling and its connection to the old days of RhyDin and AOL, and I think the lines have been drawn. I don't want to sound a "You're with us or against us" note here, except that, as Canaan's player said below, the DM/RDI management kind of already did that. We want to be open and inviting to anybody who might still be there and interested in playing with us again, but I don't think that's mutually exclusive with us booting the Inn back up as a familiar setting for older players. I really do want the Golden Perch Inn to stick around as well.

I apologize if I didn't touch on everybody's points -- I think there's a lot of good things being said here!

n.b. for Mallory: Take this with a grain of salt, since it doesn't seem to be in the setting description on RDI (they probably pulled it after the split?) or our Twilight Isle setting, but this reads a lot like the way I remember the Isle portal being described (and how I've treated it): a portal near the door to the Arena in the Red Dragon Inn. In fact, I think everything after the first paragraph is our setting description.

[Lord Arithon]

My two cents

The RDI has always been strongly associated with the dueling sports and settings, since the FFGF days on AOL. Idon't think you can truly separate them in an IC way, without something pretty dramatic happening.

I wasn't here regularly when the 'split' or whatever happened, but here is my personal point of view:

Nobody really owns the RDI. So many different entities have been involved in the many layers of story and history that surround it, that I don't think anyone can really claim it's exclusive. That being said, I see an RDI existing on more than one framework to be a non-issue. If people want to play in an RDI on Dragon's Mark, great, go do that. Want to play in an RDI on RoH? Great, do that. Want to do both? Why not! And should at some point those two distinct sets of people want to become one set again, I don't see that it would cause any significant problem.

So throw everything else aside, the super simple question is: Do people see value in having an RDI live playable room here, and so far the answer seems to be yes. So add me to the yes column!

[Michelle Montoya]

I just want to say how grateful I am for the discussion that's being generated here and the - so far - unanimous feelings about having an RDI channel on our Discord Servers. I also really appreciate this comment from Na-rae:

The inclusion of RDI is RhyDin history and from a players point of view I'd very much like to see it brought to its community and used. At the same time I don't see why the Perch couldn't stay as well and act as a flow-over room / continue to be used by those who have enjoyed it. I'm sure there are some players who see high activity in a room as almost impossible to keep track of, it was that way on AOL and even on Flashchat, and it'd be nice to have a secondary inn-like setting for those times.

I am optimistic that our community will grow and I'm delighted to see the support for the Golden Perch Inn because, as previously mentioned, it has developed a history and character of its' own that is community owned. Personally, I would fully support having both the RDI and GPI on our servers.

It's my hope that we will continue to hear from other community members who may wish to weigh in on this topic.

- M

[Pharlen]

I'm where Canaan's player is, honestly.

I do not want to dismantle the Golden Perch, and hell, if you opened a Medieval Tavern alongside the RDI, I'll be splitting my time between all three. :3

Keep in mind, if you search for the Red Dragon Inn Roleplay, you're going to find a half dozen just on the first Google page. SO it's not exactly like we're swiping this from the old Dragonsmark site.

Ideally, yeah, heads get pulled out of bottoms, and things go back to sunshine and supermen, but we held onto AOL for years hoping the same thing, and well, we know how *That* went.

It is important to get a good look at those other RDIs, by the way, most being set in "RhyDin" and having evolved from the AOL chat, because I am almost positive we are going to get some Drama. The name and setting are free to use, and as I recall, originally belonged to TSR (or one of the other gaming companies) but it was sold/ceded to AOL, who ... did nada with it. There has never been a cease and desist ordered for any off-AOL Red Dragon Inn, and being as it is all Fan driven, likely never will be or could be.

That's my two cents.

[Corlanthis]

I like the idea of writing up a setting description for it and including that on the Rhydin.org website. I'm not a huge fan of giving it a chatroom because I think Rhydin is *more* than the Red Dragon Inn and we've evolved beyond the need for it to be a permanent live-play fixture.

That said.

I'm not averse to creating it, and I certainly don't think we're hurting anyone or stepping on toes by creating it at this point. Thems toes is already stepped on. I just don't believe we *need* it.

[Crispin]

Reading through what's been said so far, I've found that my views not only match up with most of what's already been stated, but that they've already been stated much better than I could have done:

How many people show up here for Rhydin and end up leaving because there’s no Red Dragon Inn? Familiarity is what’s going to draw those searching players in and when they’re comfortable, they’ll start branching out into our other settings.

I get why it was left off to begin with, but the people who ran/allegedly run DM have made --and continue to make-- it very clear that anybody affiliated with RhyOrg and Discord in general is persona non grata on the DM website. It doesn't really feel like there's any "courtesy" left to respect, personally.

At the same time I don't see why the Perch couldn't stay as well and act as a flow-over room / continue to be used by those who have enjoyed it.

Personally, I'd love for the RDI to be on the list. I'd love for the Keep to be on the list (in the far future, maybe, if it's even an discussion at all). I'd feel that nostalgia, I'd feel that comfort, I'd feel that excitement about coming home to a place that has been and will be. I think that it's been awkward pretending that it doesn't exist when it's the predominant setting that brought us all together from the start.

[Sulissurn]

At first, I was respectful and refrained from having any chat rooms that copied the RDI/ROH. But that was entirely because it appeared there was mutual respect through out the community, at least everything was very cordial on the surface.

But the moment dragonsmark began making the choice to restrict and disallow anyone from posting, talking about, writing or 'advertising,' any other role playing website, event and what have you it became very clear to me, personally, that they were not at all interested in fostering the idea of community outside of their own. Not to mention the fact they appear to be entirely disinterested in listening to their community. Which is an odd way of going about being a...community? But whatever. I don't have the years to write up everything wrong with that.

This subject was brought up in discussion a few weeks ago and I was reluctant. It still stems from the above feeling. But like many who have already replied--and replied far better than I have--have brought up the fact that the sentiment is not returned. That is a shame; because essentially RP is not one thing, one web site, one way. Nothing harms having a share-able setting. In fact it helps every website, as every person has their own way of playing. Being able to cater to many people gives a much better chance of being able to have more members. More members = more community. More community=more types of play, happier members and a happier, longer living, thriving community.

In the end, I am for it.

Make your own RDI, with blackjack and hoo with respect to a legacy that was about freedom, choice and openness.

[Delahada]

Yes. That's my short answer. Everybody else has already said what I probably would have. I've been saying it for a long ass while now. Nobody owns the Red Dragon Inn (except those people who actually own the board game of the same name, no relation to FFRP). The following are the points I most agree with.

The inclusion of RDI is RhyDin history and from a players point of view I'd very much like to see it brought to its community and used. At the same time I don't see why the Perch couldn't stay as well and act as a flow-over room / continue to be used by those who have enjoyed it. I'm sure there are some players who see high activity in a room as almost impossible to keep track of, it was that way on AOL and even on Flashchat, and it'd be nice to have a secondary inn-like setting for those times.

YES PLEASE. HAVE BOTH. I'm one of those people who can't handle a full room. If there are more than like 10 people active in a room I'll go find another room to play in. No offense. I like you all. I just can't keep up.

The RDI has always been strongly associated with the dueling sports and settings, since the FFGF days on AOL. Idon't think you can truly separate them in an IC way, without something pretty dramatic happening.

And something pretty dramatic did happen. There's no denying that.

Personally I've never ignored its existence. I've always made mention of the FACT that the Arena is below the Red Dragon Inn, the Annex is below that, the Outback is literally out back behind the Red Dragon Inn and the portal to Twilight Isle is down a back hallway of the Red Dragon Inn as well. They are all interconnected.

The only people trying to ignore that and retcon all that history are not here. Eff them, I say. Let's reclaim, revive, and revitalize!